SaskPower released their annual report, which discusses 2016 and 2017 and forecasts their plan for renewable energy for the next 12 years.

The part of the report that stands out, however, shows that Saskatchewan will actually be increasing their carbon emissions over the next couple years.

Jordan Jackle, spokesperson with SaskPower explains why that is.

"We do plan to increase emissions into 2020, and that is because of the increase in demand for power in Saskatchewan. It does fall off significantly after that."

Jackle says the 2020 emissions increase is due increasing power demand, which spurred the need for this natural gas facility, as well as another one in the next few years.

The emissions decrease after 2020 is thanks to their plan to greatly increase renewable energy to as much as 50% of total capacity by 2030, as well as federal coal regulations coming into effect.

"(Natural Gas) Serves as very valuable base load power. So what that does is that supports more intermittent generation sources such as wind and solar - For example, you need that base load so there is power and the lights stay on when the wind isn't blowing and the sun isn't shining."

"A big portion of that will be wind capacity; we expect to add somewhere around 1,900 megawatts of wind capacity by 2030. We also plan to add 60 megawatts of utility scale solar capacity by about 2021, that will be done through a partnership with the First Nations Power Authority."

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